There's a dark side to Europe's huge bike culture

Europe's affinity for two-wheeled transportation is enviable to
anyone who enjoys riding bikes.

But you don't often hear about the thousands of stolen and
discarded bicycles getting dredged from local waterways in
Copenhagen and Amsterdam, the two cities with the largest bike
cultures in Europe, each year.

It's hard to overstates how much these cities love
bikes. In the aftermath of a snowstorm in
Copenhagen, bike
lanes are cleared before the roadways. In Amsterdam,
so-called "green waves"
allow bikes to cruise without red lights if they maintain a
certain speed. And in
both
cities, bikes outnumber people.

So it's a bit jarring, if not alarming, to see these supposedly
beloved vehicles getting fished out of a canal and heaped onto a
pile.

Since bicycles owners probably aren't the ones tossing their
trusty steeds into the water, Waternet suspects the responsible
parties are either vandals who just want to be destructive or
thieves who don't know what else to do with the stolen property.

The bikes that Waternet scoops up all end up as scrap metal,
even if they appear to be in good condition.